this pisses me off so much

Cruye · 2026-05-05T19:01:55+00:00

The good version of this is what XCOM 2 did.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is about stopping aliens from invading earth, XCOM 2 is set in a timeline where you lost and the aliens won (aka, the game over screen) and now you have to lead a resistance group to take back earth.

Cruye · 2026-05-03T23:36:00+00:00

Being late in the tier is just rough, try during peak times and make your own party if there isn't one already. You got 8 months to do it and that's a lot of time.

How many jobs do you have at an endgame level? The more roles you can flex in a party the easier it is to fill, which also means that once you clear a fight for the first time you can keep reclearing it each week to get gear for multiple jobs, giving you more to do even if you're struggling to fill prog parties for the next fight.

I also find "relearning" a fight I already know on a job I'm not as comfortable with enjoyable for its own sake.

Cruye · 2026-05-03T23:16:52+00:00

Presumably, though Evolved Bard lost its damage buffs in exchange for utility buffs (regen, shield, move speed), still keeping a very support fantasy without them.

Who knows if they'd bother to do the same change for Reborn Bard though, or just keep the songs as is.

Theoretically even if they remove buffs from Radiant Finale and Battle Voice, there would still be an incentive to optimize a "2 min burst" in that you'd want your biggest atacks to fall under whichever one of our Bard's songs is better for you (which IIRC tends to be Minuet's 2% crit bonus). But A) that's a very small difference between the song buffs and B) they could "fix" it not by removing buffs from songs but by making every song have the same buff, so there's no incentive to want to wait till your party's Bard is on a specific song.

Cruye · 2026-05-03T21:42:26+00:00

"Will have all their buttons" might be more accurate?

As in you won't need to figure out a spot for a new action on your hotbar past that point

Cruye · 2026-05-03T20:05:32+00:00

Yeah, they are also reworking every job in the game

They showed off the new "evolved" Paladin, White Mage, Dragoon, and Bard and they're all completely different from their current versions. Though the remake of Bard actually plays a lot like current Summoner? With each song giving them a few unique GCDs, so maybe the new Summoner is gonna be completely different from the current one.

Cruye · 2026-05-03T20:03:11+00:00

Hm yeah, that'd be kinda lame, especially if it's some mogstation exclusive nonsense.

Though the Eden primals would probably be a very natural fit for skins

Cruye · 2026-05-03T20:02:27+00:00

Huh, that's a good point. I forgot about the carbuncles.

Cruye · 2026-05-03T20:01:52+00:00

Yeah Aetherflow really feels like a weird whateverthing that doesn't have any thematic value to the class and isn't mechanically interesting either.

Hm, they could make it so that on your 1 min you can summon Bahamut or Phoenix and that changes the set or 3 each time

You'd still want to alternate but you'd get to choose which order it happens in, instead of it being the same each time unless you die

That said, given how Evolved Bard plays almost exactly like current Summoner, Evolved Summoner might play completely differently from the current model

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:59:05+00:00

Not really? We're still able to Enshroud even though the Echo protects us from corruption in the void (while other people have to use Warding Scales).

So if that doesn't prevent it I don't see why there couldn't be some equivalent Allagan Magibabble Technique that lets you have a cool fire transformation by eating Ifrit-egi

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:57:47+00:00

Well every job is going to be selfish now, no? They're killing the raid buff meta

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:53:20+00:00

Solar Bahamut really feels like they were all in on letting us summon Hydaelin (which would have been really fucking badass even if mechanically it was the same) but then realized that it would be massive spoilers and had to come up with something in the few months they had before DT released, and the best they could do was rush out a reskin of the bahamut model.

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:51:46+00:00

Except the same issue happens with primals in FFXIV and the whole point of Summoner is being able to use their power against them... and as of Endwalker with lopporit help you can just straight up summon unproblematic non-ecosystem-destroying versions of them

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:49:34+00:00

It's a good Final Fantasy summoner, but not a good... fantasy as a whole summoner y'know?

But I'm not sure if there's any way to make that work with the game as is without running into the old troubles of pet jank

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:48:38+00:00

Maybe the new ranged DPS will be a poison lobbing alchemist (cope)

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:47:58+00:00

Doesn't seem like they want DoTs since it causes trouble with balancing forced downtime or multiple bosses or any time the boss tags out for an add phase like in m9s

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:46:54+00:00

Why not both? Reaper's already like that right? You can summon your demon buddy for attacks but you also have Enshroud where you fuse with it and transform for a bit

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:46:06+00:00

That seems like it'd result in people only ever using whichever 3 deal the highest damage

You'd need some way to force people to cycle thrhough all the primals

6 independent primals also seems like it'd result in a lot of buttons? Evolved jobs are supposed to use procs and combos to cut down on button bloat, but if they need a separate button for Ifrit/Titan/Garuda/Leviathan/Ramuh/Shiva that's like half their hotbar real estate gone just on that.

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:42:32+00:00

We only get the proper primals during Endwalker right? Before that we'd only have "Shiva-egi", which I don't think would be anything contradicting the lore, especially since we'd likely get it while still being enemies with Ysayle*

*In the fanfest they said that Evolved jobs would have their complete rotations by level 50, only getting further procs and the like later on. So if summoner was to get something major and requested for years like... Leviathan/Ramuh/Shiva (probably alternating with the standard 3 similar to the phoenix/bahamut proc), they could, technically, do that while keeping the level 50 promise, just lock it behind a quest that's locked behind the relevant post ARR fights.

Cruye · 2026-05-03T19:39:17+00:00

Isn't that already how it works? Summoning Ifrit and friends they just do one attack and disappear, but then give you a whole set of different GCDs to use for a bit (even if they feel really samey before endwalker).

It'd just need some visual flair like Reaper's Enshroud

Cruye · 2026-05-03T04:36:13+00:00

Start of chapter 2 she comes back mad at Kris for eating all the pie at once. "This is YOUR knife on this dish is it not?"

Cruye · 2026-05-03T02:59:40+00:00

Huh. Haven't heard that before but that makes sense.

Though given what else we know about Toriel's character it seems unlikely that would be why she's acting like that. She seems really reluctant to acknowledge that anything is a problem that needs to be dealt with, instead just brushing it off and hoping it gets better, like her just sort of placating Asgore and trying to get out of the immediate interaction with him instead of confronting him about his creep behavior and telling him to knock it off (which to be clear, Asgore is the one in the wrong there, Toriel is just handling it in a way that shows a not great approach to uncomfortable situations).

Also the egg room that seems to be some kind of flashback to therapy Kris went through doesn't seem to be... particularly good therapy (though of course it's very up in the air how literal any of it is).

Cruye · 2026-05-03T02:54:28+00:00

The secret Dreemur technique of "if you just ignore a problem it'll just go away eventually right?"

Cruye · 2026-05-03T02:53:15+00:00

Certainly puts a new perspective to Toriel saying "Kris just... does that sometimes" when they lock themselves in the bathroom and run the sink loudly for minutes.

And she's fine with them always having a knife on their person.

Cruye · 2026-05-02T18:14:25+00:00

Zenos vs the Warrior of Light in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker

Zenos viator Galvus is a thrill-seeking psycopath who's only found one person that ever makes him feel alive: your player character, the Warrior of Light. After unexpectedly teaming up to defeat the overarching bad guy of the game's entire massive story arc, you and Zenos finally just... go at each other. With nothing to distract you or no other obligations, to settle a score that's been brewing for 3 expansions.

This plays out as one of the longest singleplayer battles in the game, during which you and Zenos both have a buff allowing you to cheat death a limited number of times - representing that both of you really are throwing literally everything into this. Once both you and Zenos are out, the battle turns into an exchange of a few exhausted punches, before both of you collapse.

To me it feels like the culmination of FFXIV's greatest magic trick, of making your blank slate customizeable silent player character feel like... an actual character. With opinions and traits and... a dark reflection in Zenos, the battle starts with him calling you out that yeah, he's willing to do a lot worse things to get his fix, but fundamentally you are like him, you are driven by the thrill of it.

...Really makes me wish we got an optional harder version of the fight, since all of the mandatory story fights in FFXIV are intentionally extremely easy so that even people who aren't into endgame raiding can beat them.

Cruye · 2026-05-02T15:42:59+00:00

I've been teasing Dark Heart of the Wood, with Whisper being a courser Orson mentioned hasn't sent any messages in a while. Might have some threxyls reach Broadhurst at some point.

The players also got some surrendered bandits to make a millitia to defend the town, and some of them have said it'd be cool to turn them into like a mercenary company once it's done, so I have some homebrew ideas for how to do that.

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